Comcast modems

Go to the Comcast website and find their list of acceptable modems.

DOCSIS standards are happy things. You're better off than say if you wanted to buy an ADSL router.

Check comcast's site though. I'm willing to be however any DOCSIS 2.0 model will do what you want.

But I'll challenge you a bit--why buy? The down side is that it gives Comcast something else to point their finger at when (not if) you end up with packet loss and signal quality problems. And modems do go bad after sucking up surges on the line over the years.

And Comcast loves pointing fingers at anyone but themselves. Even with a Comcast owned modem, my experience with them was maddening in trying to resolve a packet loss issue. Finally on my urging they replaced the friggin 3 year old modem, and magically the problem vanished.

YMMV.

Best REgards,

Any DOCSIS 2.0 compliant modem will do. Some of the most popular ones are Motorola SB5100 series and the RCA.

As others posted, most any DOCSIS 2 comliant modem will do.

The fun part is registering your modem. Unlike dial-up and most DSL, cable companies typically use the modem's HFC MAC address for authorization. When you change modems, you need to get the new HFC MAC address registered.

For Comcast, when you connect an unregistered modem to their network, you end up in a restricted area where you can get it registered. This involves downloading some software. I did this once, and it worked, but when I had some issues later and called tech support, their system still had the OLD address! You are probably better off calling them and letting them know you are changing modems. The HFC MAC address is usually on the modem someplace.

Exactly why I rent. I initially rented because I was the first in my small development to get Comcast internet, and I had a feeling there were going to be problems (and there were - first they blamed my wiring - I wired it myself and I knew it was good - but they wired a home run to the modem only to find out that wasn't it. They couldn't blame the modem because it was theirs. It turned out to be a problem out on a pole.)

I just got a note from Comcast asking me to swap my modem to go "Full Speed" (whatever that means). That will be the third modem (first one broke, replaced at no cost since I was renting). I look at the $36/year as "hardware maintenance" on my modem.

One more reason to rent...when they upgrade to the new software versions that the old ones are not compatable with. Happened to me last year, fortunatley, for me, I also rent. They came out and replaced it no charge. I think it was the new "docsis" but that may be the wrong word. This year I upgraded to a "business" account and it was a different modem altogether. Even came with, for $5.00 per month, a static IP address. "Business" account itself is $75.00 more per month, but does give them just 24 hours to fix any outages. Just like a hi-rise downtown, they now show up and fix it when my neighborhood goes down.

If you do buy, stick with a name brand. The Motorola SB5120 may not be cheap, but it's extremely popular and common. Many rentals are either the 5120 or a variation of it.

Comcast recently replaced my rented Motorola modem with a Scientific-Atlanta model DPC2100R2. Together with their faster service, I'm now achieving 40 to 60 KB per second, using PC Mag's Surfspeed.

- Max

The nature of the Surf Speed test is designed to more resemble the "real world", by accessing web pages from 6-8 operating web sites, such as MSN, AOL, Apple, Google, and Myspace. It opens multiple http connections, then randomly walks pages. So, it's maeasuring how quickly those sites serve up the pages to you.

That's a pretty different number than the single-file downloads that most other test sites perform.

--Gene

That's low by about a factor of 10.

I'm not a fan of speed test sites in general, but that one seems to go out of its way to be less valuable than most.

I prefer to measure my speed with a utility like DUMeter or Bandwidth Monitor, as two examples.